Yesterday is done Tomorrow never comes
by daysofourhives
Summary: I have felt so sad for Tate since the finale of AHS. I wrote this for him.
1. Chapter 1

**Yesterday is done. Tomorrow never comes.**

Everyone is asleep. They snort and snore every once in a while, but for the most part you couldn't wake them with cannon fire. That's good. At night I can be what I feel without fear of them giving me that "Oh no, not again" look that I am afraid will surface at some point. I guess I should give him props for even agreeing to exist alongside me after what I put them through. Just a dying guy on his bedroom floor. Watching the guy die. And then come back to life, some freaking reanimated dead nightmare.

I have other things to do in the night, when no one can watch or judge. I can't decide what drove me crazier: the normal beat and thrum of everyday life that was way too boring and painful for my supposed gentle soul, or dying and coming back from the peace and release of death, or losing her. So every night I sit here, smoking Salem after Salem by this electronic glow with my ear buds in and shuffle turned on and try to work it out on Word.

Once, I pulled a sweater out I had not worn in a few months and found a long, brown hair on it. That was a bad night. Actually, most of them are bad nights. I am up until sunrise every time, until the new kid's annoying rap music starts blasting out of his clock radio and I slip over into the shadows and feign sleeping through it all. When he's gone, I go to sleep. I sleep in the afternoon. I can't sleep at night. The dark has become scary to me once again. Like it was when I was small, and there was no one to tell me it was all right.

Usually, it won't get really bad until after two or three am. Then some sad song will come up in the shuffle. I try to ignore it. It's just music. Ha. That's like saying poetry is just words. I'll fight it a while, typically. But something will resonate in me; a particular line, a word or two that reminds me of what I gained, and lost just as quickly. That's when it starts. Every single night since then, and as far as I can foresee, every single night I will live through until I die again, if ever. I want to make it without this nightly ritual, but I can't. I have to bleed every single nightfall to make it through the next day, and the next, and the endless days lined up like fence posts into infinity.

When that song finally comes on, I try. Sometimes it's the same song. Sometimes it's something new and I think maybe I can bear this one; it's not the same as the one the night before. But I know deep inside it won't be. They all are the same, the hurt is the same, and the broken heart is still broken. I try lighting a smoke. No. I lean back. No. I won't change the song. I seem to want this every night. This longing to come to me, for everything to feel fresh and new and the wound opens again and here I am, hemorrhaging all over again. I last a few bars; a stanza, a chorus. But it always happens all over, like a movie playing in my head. Her face appears before me like a specter, ghostly hands on my own, her sweet smile and bright eyes like a stones in a clear mountain stream.

But it isn't real. And when I recall that, it smarts and burns and it finally erupts into that first smirking sob that gives me a tiny flicker of relief. Relief is relative: this type lasts only until the next sob, and then the hot tears find their way out of my eyes and spill onto my face, making endless streaks down my cheeks. I don't even bother to wipe them. More will follow. Pointless. I patch together memories that seem like snatches of dreams, turning happy into despair like a quilt sewn from the scraps of broken promises. And when the sobs get harder and shake my abdomen and put me in fear of rousing everyone I bite my lip and clench my fists and try. I try so hard, but they break free, water over a dam, lost and gone and never coming back. Nothing left but the swirls and eddies in the mud. The water from my eyes and the water broken free, never to recover; to mix and intertwine and become one. A tsunami I cannot, I will not stop. This is what my reward is for loving too hard and too fast and too well. I strain to forget. I cannot.

I cannot. I cannot. I cannot. Truth be known, I don't want to forget the only happiness I ever knew.

The hurt is blissful in a way. At least I feel alive when the hurt is there. I never thought I would understand those cuts I made to let the blood flow and feel the release. Now I do. Only now mine is water. Always the water. Sometimes I put a finger up and taste the water, wondering if it will taste as bitter as I imagine. But it doesn't. Just like everything else I imagine. It isn't real. Even I am not real anymore. I left myself on that bedroom floor, I think. Perhaps she was a dream I had in the seconds as I died. A beautiful glimpsed of Heaven that is not for me, not now, not ever. Doomed to roam and be a specter of what I was when the dream was alive. Slipped through my fingers like the smoke from my cigarettes. Gone.


	2. Chapter 2

I know he's there. I think he took up smoking. Late at night, I smell it, and it's not mine. It's harder to find those nasty menthols the guy who lives here now smokes. He's stealing them, just like I do. I think it's ironic that we are both looking for the same thing, stealing from the guy and stealing from each other.

I'm kind of mad that he is smoking. Not like it's going to hurt him. If you could see the bullet holes, it would be fun to watch the smoke seep and creep out of them. I digress, as some of my read over and over books might say. I'm angry because that is something else he took from me.

The bullets bother me, too. I didn't see what happened, but I can picture it. I've seen enough on television to reenact that in my mind. Probably isn't as dramatic and eerily beautiful as Hollywood (ugh) makes it appear, but that's how I see it anyway. Him being a little shit, right to the end. Sneer. Pissing off a SWAT team; smooth move, buddy. Laser pointers dancing around all over the Vital Triangle. And then they go, a firing squad of overkill, and he's kicked back and falling and the sneer is gone and finally he's just a boy lying on the floor, choking on the blood his heart is ceasing to pump. Brown eyes fading from the spark of life to the dull of death.

Not too long ago I got down on my hands and knees on the floor, looking for the spot where it stained the hardwood. Can't buff out a boy's body-worth of blood. When I located it, I bent down and sniffed. Trying to find his scent. It's been a long time since I had a good whiff of it. Sometimes I catch it going down the stairs, or in the basement. Like when you're walking behind someone who's just passed out of your vision and you encounter a rooster-tail of perfume or aftershave.

I don't know why people put on fake smells to be appealing, when their real smell is better. His was the best.

And I wish I wouldn't think that. I have become forgiving in my young old age. What difference does it make? I play reasoning games in my head while I sit on this damn bed when the kid is at school. Was it really that offensive, in the long run? You horrible girl, of course it was. But I think the latter is social bullshit that we are taught to think. Oh, clutch the pearls and be horrified with everyone else so you'll fit in. Not my style, to say the least. No one else cares anymore. Why should I?

Sometimes when the kid is at school, I think he's in here. I sleep when the kid is gone but I'll wake up now and again and catch that whiff of an ember of his smell and sit up and look around. If it wasn't so ridiculous I'd think it was creepy. Usually I decide it was another dream and I lay back down until the kid's G-Boy ass thumps back up there and I have to go bother myself with my thoughts somewhere else. I can't bear his music. When the clock radio goes off in the morning it's bad enough, but when he plays whole _albums_ of it it's worse.

What if he was here? What the hell would I say? "Hey, how's it hanging?" I said that to dad once and really pissed him right the fuck off. I thought it was funny. I know **he** would love it.

But, oh, Mom and Dad are eternally wrapped up in the perpetually cute baby. Just like before. That teenage girl? Is that one ours, too? Oh never mind, the little gremlin has spit up on his face, isn't it just the cutest thing ever? Barf and gag. Most of my emotions were gone by the time the baby got here so I just really don't give a hang. Ha ha. Gotcha.

Any real love, or memory of it lives with him. Somewhere.

Tonight the moon is full and G-Boy is out spending the night with someone so I don't have to worry about waking him up. The smell of cigarettes is really strong tonight and it pisses me off because I got smoke-napped again. Maybe the guy has gotten smart and is hiding them. He probably thinks that lump kid of his is stealing them. Huh. The kid smokes Newports trying to be all gangsta. And he does it _socially_. Social smoking makes me want to heave up an organ. So poser.

And someone's always got the kids IPod and the laptop is gone, damn it. Every night this week I've tried to find it and it isn't there. Kid probably pawned them to finance a grill. He would.

The others think I ought to go for it with the kid. Repulsive. It's bad enough when I catch him engaging in self-motivation. Yuck yuck yuck.

True confessions: I would watch him do that, Hell, I would help. But I haven't seen him and I don't know where I sent him.

I feel like a bitch for that. A final solution to what turned out to be a temporary problem in my mind.

I was a stupid bitch. I should have waited around a while. See how it panned out. Miss Rash Decisions. That's how I got stuck here in the first place, isn't it? But he tried to stop my rash decision. I haven't forgotten that either.

Don't we all deserve a little redemption now that it's obvious we aren't going to make it to the Big Party in the Sky? I sure could.

I'm pissed that I can't use words in a way that's beautiful or moving. He did. He was the master of it. I can read beautiful prose and recognize it, but I can't form it. It just rolled off his tongue like smoke rolls off of mine. Or his, as I now suspect.

Fuck him for taking the cigarettes. If he did.

Speaking of the old Anglo-Saxonism that I just used: I remember that, too. No, my selfish self-absorbed ass drank all that in and made it all about me and not once did I reply to all the proclamations of love he made to me that night. Not until it was too late. Not until the last time I would smell him.

Idiot, stupid…GOD!

Do what's right.

Do what everyone thinks you should.

Do it.

Just do it.

Flush your hope of any reconciliation or happiness down the toilet like you should have done with those pills you took.

I just caught another whiff of it. _It_. _Him_.

It's so messed up. I want to die again.


	3. Chapter 3

It's Spring again, so I go out into the back yard filled with moonlight and promised romance for those who do not number themselves amongst the tragic and the doomed. Right around the gazebo the Old Bastard built after a hurried trip to Home Depot one morning, they grow. In profusion. White ones, purple ones. White with purple throats. Those are the ones she would have loved best. They are different, special snowflakes unlike all the rest. I pull a few, bringing the dark green heart-shaped leaves with them. The stems are soft and easily crushed and bruised.

I know why she bears their name. The vision of them clouds with my ever-present tears. Flowers for her grave. The grave she dug herself, but both of us occupy. Together, but apart.

I took my tiny delicate treasures back inside and climb the stairs to the new boy's room. He didn't stay tonight. Probably off drinking 40 ounces with his B-Boy friends…or are they G-Boys now? The former was from back in my day. Now they all want to carry guns and try to be street-wise when they live in suburban neighborhoods with sprawling yards that they employ the very people they eminate to care for. Classic paradox.

And the carrying guns part? I could write a scorching soliloquy on that subject. Play with fire, gonna get burned. But enough of the puns. The moon is so bright in the room that used to contain my joy. Now it only holds my endless sorrow. I lay the tiny sweet flowers on the bed, like I had done with her before. The most beautiful day of my life when I felt consummated and whole because of her. She said it was intense. I had a thesaurus full of words I wanted to express, but I followed her suit and tried not to be writer I wished I would have been, if only I had lived.

If only preceded a lot of my thoughts since then. _If only_.

But I heard noise on the stairs and the old door knob rasping in a turn and I dove back into the darkness from whence I came.


	4. Chapter 4

I frumped back into the room after making my routine patrol of the facilities. To be perfectly candid, I do it trying to find him and to be even more candid, the scent of him in the room, memory or not, was overwhelming at one point. I had to go and seek the physical source.

Nada. Not even a whisper.

But of course, I had driven that away like a stolen car. Like the little parrot girl who did what everyone expected her to do. Wanted her to do. For the first time in my life, I had done what I was told. And now, this room is hell. Or damn near close.

Something was on the bed that was not there before. I crossed across, walking over the stain on the floorboards that kept the last visage I had of him. My own personal Shroud of Turin. The kid wasn't home. He'd be deep in his malt liquor by now, living a real life but pretending to be something else.

I live a dead life and pretend I am the past.

My eyes arrested on the little bundle on my bed. Wilting, a little battered.

Violets.

I spun. The scent of the cigarettes was overpowering. The scent of him was overpowering. I swatted the air with my arms, trying to catch his form somewhere in the ether. I placed both of my palms on the bed where we were once as one, trying to drag him up from the sheets. But nothing but these violets. Damn flowers. He had given me the only flower I ever got from a boy. And now, here were more.

Violets. Sweeter than all the roses, he said once. Sweet violets. Covered all over in sweet violets.

A sob came out of my like a retch. I hate what I have done. I hate I didn't think, I hate I didn't reconsider when he released the last Kid and crossed over to me. I hate how the memory of his baby fine hair lingers on my hands.

I hate all of this existence I have made for myself.


	5. Chapter 5

"Do you want them?"

That familiar husky voice cut the silence in the moon-washed room and echoed in her ears.

What?

What?

She looked up and the laptop's milky glow illuminated his face. The burning cigarette between impossibly long fingers. Dark eyes shiny, like wet rocks.

"Do I want…" how to finish this sentence? Multiple choice: A-yes. B- no. Forget B, it's the Stupid Answer that lurks in all multiple choice questions. C- None of the above. D- all of the above.

Decisions, decisions. And her mind had been on him so, was this imagining?

"The flowers?" she asked, stupifyed.

He sighed. "The cigarettes. Do you want them?"

"Is that you?" she said again, sounding to herself like an idiot.

"It would be pretty difficult to be a ghost of a ghost."

She took tentative steps forward. "You're here." She breathed.

He never moved. A ribbon of smoke curled into the moonlight and mingled with its glow. "I'm always here." Slow blinking.

It was so difficult to be cool and emotionless when his heart thrummed like hummingbird wings in his chest.

A few more steps. "Yes." He put the cigarette on the edge of the desk and handed the pack across the top of the computer. A faltering, small hand reached out to take it, and brushed against his. The hummingbird in his chest took flight into the night sky.

"Why are you smoking?" she asked, apropos of nothing.

"Nothing else to do. And, I watched you do it so much, it was a little way to hang on to you."

Her breath caught and hitched.

"Why would you want to do that?" she whispered.

"Because I love you." Straightforward, no bullshit. It was as subtle as a caveman.

"I sent you away."

"I was batshit crazy."

"_But I sent you away_. How are you always here?"

"Because it's my Hell. I sleep with you in the afternoons but I can never touch you. I follow you when you walk around looking for me but you can never see me. I read over your shoulder but I can't feel your hair or kiss your neck. The worst going away," he said, blowing smoke, "is the one where you can't really go away at all."

"A dangling carrot!" she said in amazement. He nodded.

Holy shit. All this time…unable to speak, unable to touch, unable to be with her other than as an observer.

"Then why now?"

He shrugged in faux coolness, the cigarette millimeters from his mouth.. "I don't know. Maybe the firewalls are down." A slight smile. Dimples. He took a drag and blew it out through his nostrils.

"Maybe you've been caught in my spam trap," she replied, lighting one of those nasty menthols with a lighter drawn from her sweater pocket.

"Maybe you should clean it out sometimes…look at what it's caught."

Transfixed, staring at each other, daring each other to break the barrier and be themselves again. Silent. The cigarette she lit burned away, unsmoked in her hand.

"I…" she broke off. What was he going to say? Even she didn't know.

_I was a child and she was a child,_

_In this kingdom by the sea;_

_But we loved with a love that was more than love-_

_I and my Annabel Lee;_

_With a love that the winged seraphs of heaven_

_Coveted her and me._

"Oh," she said to these quoted words. "Poe."

The little smile came stronger this time, with deeper dimples. "That's right."

"But…does it have to end so sad? "

_For the moon never beams without bringing me dreams_

_Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;_

_And the stars never rise but I feel the bright eyes_

_Of the beautiful Annabel Lee…_

"Tell me," she whispered. "Tell me how to make it stop. The ending's too sad. I'll cry."

"Say it," he said, willing her, praying to her. Oh please, oh please, please, please.

She gathered her little body up. Had it been this easy all the time? Just say words and break some magic mumbo jumbo and send it all dithering away into the dust.

"We're not children in the kingdom by the sea anymore, are we?" she ventured.

"No," he replied, stubbing out the Salem. "Not for a long time now. I guess passing years affect some some sort of adulthood even though we don't look like we change. They stopped our physical progress. They can't stop our minds."

She didn't know who _they_ were, but she was grateful to them.

"So, I just say…" she peered into his face, lit by the white screen.

"You know what to say. I've whispered it in your heart a thousand times since then. Just say it."

Words materialized in her mind, floating like clouds.

"Come back," she said softly, then again, bolder: "Come back. _Come back_."

He leaped like a tiger, knocking the chair backwards so that it spun lazily on its wheels behind him. Her hand steadied herself on the bed rail when he crashed into her, all perfect and whole and remembering where he wished he have left off when she vanished from his hands so long ago. Her face was seized between two long graceful hands that held her head, the silky hair, the soft cheeks. All of it. Real again. Not imagined. The specter as gone.

"I missed you!" he wept as he had all those nights with the smoke and the computer. "I missed you!"

She finally responded, pressing her face into his shirt and taking a deep breath of his smell. No mere vestige, no fleeting whiff this time. All. Great lungfulls of the only smell that ever offered her any comfort, and feeling of love and memory and home.

The wall was gone. The room was theirs again.


	6. Chapter 6

The moonlight made a black paper cutout of the shadow; two figures slightly swaying as if in a breeze.

"I felt you once." Muffled, from the folds of his shirt. "Decorating the tree. You were outside."

"Yeah," was the reply above her head. "I know." The memory wrenched at his chest, his stomach.

"I heard you, what you said. About forever."

"What else have I got besides forever?"

"You have this," she answered, and lifted their clasped hands to put his over her heart. "Did you feel this break that night?"

"I couldn't feel anything of you. I could see you, hear you. But just like black is the absence of color, that was the absence of your heart. The unkindest cut," he tilted his face back and caught a splash of the moonlight, "of all."

She tried to hold her brave misfit's face, be all tough and edgy and so _her_, but what she was thinking was too cruel to mask. "I hatred thinking you were outside. When it rained. When the wind blew. I was so glad that the stupid gazebo was out there." Her shoulders hitched. "I wanted you to have someplace you could go!"

Healing waters this time. Not the bitter waters from before. He felt her heart opening up and rushing back into him, like sun filtering through blinds, hastening, a drug through his veins. Filling every corner of every part of him with light. The glorious light.

Memories of the beach as a tow-headed little boy. Seagulls and tossed Fritos into the air. Everyone smiling in a thick discolored Polaroid crammed into a box stuffed into a dank corner in the basement. Exposed to the light again and coming alive and filling his heart with love…

The fire that was his screams as he burned, the faces of scared kids under tables and desks, all the other faces that moved rapidly by like an old school filmstrip, bleached white in that light…blowing like ashes, away.

And at last he was left alone with her. No one roused by their name or face drawn to mind. No one conniving, scheming. Just the living, sleeping. Every soul, silent.

He drew back again, amazed. "Do you hear it?" The back of his neck crawled. "It's quiet. _It's quiet_…"

She tilted her head like a bird listening to the ground.

His dark eyes traveled across the ceiling, down the doorways, around the crown molding and down to the slightly open window. There. It left through there.

Goodbye.

Good riddance.

The eyes flicked back to hers, steady and believable and never as they had looked before. Without guile or deceit. "You know?" he asked.

She nodded, twin tears skating down her cheeks. "Yeah. I know."

She hugged him a long time. The firm knob of the top of his spine under warm skin rounded by her hands. His shirt shoulder increasingly damp by tears. She wept so long and so hard that he felt she would run dry and shrivel in his arms.

"Hey," he nosed her head up. "Hey. Don't snot on me. Tears: okay. Mucus: not so much."

She had to smile, but only fleetingly. "Who was I to say what needed to be punished and paid for? Who was I? What was I thinking? Who did I THINK I WAS?" Her cry rang in the quiet octagonal corners of the room.

Long hands smoothing over already hopelessly sleek hair. "It doesn't matter." Very softly.

"Why did I put us through it? Didn't I know someday it would change? I started out knowing what I felt, but what I didn't count on was my heart growing and changing."

Fingers around her chin. "But not changing everything."

"No. Making some things grow even more than you could have imagined."

He blinked in the moonbeam, awash in soft white light. "I love you."

She moved forward slightly so she too was engulfed within the moon's glow. "I love you, too."

Only once had those words passed her lips before; only the most awful day of his death; the most beautiful words on the most horrible day. He thought he was filled with light, but he had been wrong as it raced through him again in coursing waves of warmth and embers and… _light_.

Every curve of her fit right, felt right. The brush of satin hair directly under his chin, catching the stubble there for eternity because someone didn't shave that last day. Arms encircling his rib cage and hanging onto handfuls of shirt on his back.

This was right. This was the Right Thing.

"So, it's…all right?" Old fears died hard, and this was an old, old one.

She nodded what she didn't speak, but pulled back to look at him with her mountain stream eyes. They spoke more eloquently than any word could have.

And he knew then that hope he had fostered so long was really a truth. The light at the end of the tunnel that for _once_ was not a train. Not in vain. Never more.

Frantic pulling at his shoulders, grabbing the fabric in fingers and yanking, tugging, urgent. Rosebud pink lips parted and asking and reaching.

If he had thought he was filled with the light…

The first impact, the bumping noses of awkward turn-your-head and find your position, finding that place and a velvet tongue slipping into your mouth. The taller of you pushed down, clamping hands on upper arms to pause only briefly before they wandered and scattered and grew unflinching. Being edged back and led back and coaxed back toward the bed, the one place that…the bed.

Death had not touched the bed. He knew he fell to the hardwood still alive. The floor they stood on, death had come. The bed was flooded in moonlight. There was no death there.

It was there they would begin another life, and scorn death.

Pushing clothes aside, discarding them when they grew binding, the kisses that turned to sucking that turned to biting. The final baring of flesh and belt buckle clattering to the floor and shoes thumping off the bed like basketballs. And then…

He was poised above her for the second time in his death and the first time in his life. Perfect in the moonlight, lightest blonde strands that framed her face beside her head like the sides of a violin as she gazed up with certainty mixed with uncertainty, hope mixed with fear.

"No being sad. No regrets," he said, wiping her tears away. "It's over. All of it."

"Eternity being happy isn't eternity anymore," she breathed.

He sank and she arched, bringing sheets between her fingers . He was back almost immediately, to whisper to her, driving her insane and to the edge of a chasm so deep the bottom was unfathomable.

His deep, dark eyes fixed on hers. Unfathomable.

"Oh!" was all she said. "Oh!"

If he thought he was filled with the light before…

His face was buried in sweet-smelling hair and soft skin. You had to be careful not to mark that skin. Not hurt it. Every cell was precious and deserved to live. To live and grow and flourish. He was on his elbows, reluctant to leave, feeling her sleek legs side down his hips and her feet rest on the backs of his knees. Urging. Feeling. Her hands found his flanks and grazed there. Tickling enough to make him jump and move at her will. Controlled, he did as she wished and the control came back to him, trying to keep her from bending away in pleasure and relief.

They switched control, over and over, until all of the dead hate and regret and darkness coiled into a viper in their bellies, ready to strike and release the venom that had poisoned them for so long.

So very, very long.

She cried first, as if in pain when the viper bit, twisting away and back again to push and drag and grind against. He watched in wonder, this most amazing of physical phenomenon. He brought this to her. This wonderful, warm sun; this life. And when she sank back, sated and breathing and pink and so alive, he could no longer bear the love he felt for her and his heart burst first in his chest then all over, flooding him. His face disappeared into her hair, then to her lips to gasp and strain, open mouthed against hers and breathe her life into his lungs.

The moon was unwavering. The tiny flowers and deep green, heart shaped leaves were crushed beneath them. Slowly they came apart and found their clothes about the bed. Found shoes and socks and jeans and tights. They stood up to leave, but…

She dashed across the room, boots clumping and holding her hat flat on her head.

"Don't forget the cigarettes," she said brightly, holding them up. "I'll never smoke them. They found you."

He smiled at her and encircled her shoulders with one long arm.

Down the staircase, looking at the dark walls and pictures and cut glass decorations. Through the entryway where everything that went wrong in this house started, the damn cursed doorway that foolishly closed its heavy door against the perceived dangers outside. Down the milky front walk, to the iron gates that closed the property in.

He hung his fingers in the gate. "You ready?"

She looked back, head-held-on-hat turned back on her shoulders, looking. "Yes."

He swung the gate open standing on it, like he had done as a child. Banging a bicycle through. Running from Mama. Running in that last day. When it was wide over the outside, he jumped off, sneakers thudding on the concrete. He reached back and lifted her easily onto the ground. Outside. Breathing. Warm blood moving past through long-still veins.

They stepped out onto the sidewalk and began walking, arms around each other. They passed his mother's house with her solitary bedroom lamp lit near the window. Past the spot on the street where his sister died. If only she could have been there. She could have come back as well. There was enough to go around. Love is huge and boundless and always willing to grow. It grew with each step and each real breath of spring night.

Around the gazebo, the violets ruffled in a breeze.

The same breeze blew their hair as they walked in the moonlight. A disturbed bird slapped out of a tree in the corner of his mother's yard as they passed it by and left it behind.

The gate grew smaller and smaller behind them. She started to look back and he caught her in a tight grip. "Let it go. It's over."

A newspaper deliveryman poked twin headlights down the street as he threw paper. Whop. Whop. He peered at them through his window.

"Good morning, young people!" the man called. "Going home?"

"Nope," he replied. "Leaving hell!"

The newspaper deliveryman chortled and waved. And they walked to the end of the street and turned away, down another avenue and back to their new life.

They thought they had been filled with light when they were still dead, back there…


	7. Chapter 7

They went to the beach.

At first, since the world was opened up to them like a big, long book you've waited so long to read, they thought they might see what was happening out there. But when it came down to it, what difference did the world make? They had forgone it so long that the world didn't matter anymore. All that mattered now was them and that they were together and alive and free.. So, they went to the beach.

The moon on the ocean was always something he had loved. Fodder for the poet's gristmill. It made him think of things he wanted to write down and things he wanted to say and tell her and do. She was just happy to be out, happy to be encircled in arms she had longed for, feel the warm breath she would die again for against her cheek as she leaned back against him, sitting between his knees on the sand.

"It's beautiful," she remarked, watching the white of the waves go pearlescent in the moonlight and then skid across the wet sand into nothingness. His face pushed into her hair and his voice was in her ear.

"From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon."

Her lip curled out at the sea. "How do you remember all that shit?"

"Shit? Well that's offensive. I think we should go back to the house now." There was barely hidden glee in his sarcasm.

"Like hell we will!" She pulled his arms tighter around her, hugging herself with them. "Anyway, what are we going to do?"

"Whatever you want," he replied. "I'll do whatever makes you happy."

"Well, you know… additionally, P.S. and by the way, we aren't dead anymore. We have to do little trivial things like eat and sleep somewhere."

She felt him shrug. "I'll think of something."

She turned to look at him. "Really? Well let me know when you find a few dollars so we can buy a lottery ticket and use our super-scary-we-were-dead powers to know the winning numbers."

He sighed, blowing her hair. "You're still such a smart ass."

"You fucking love it."

He squeezed her. "Yeah. I do."

They watched the waves move for a while in silence. Then:

"Maybe we could go to college."

"Money?" she said. "There's that little issue again."

"Well don't they have student loans or something? Shit, we're just poor little intellectuals sleepin' on the beach, trying to change the world but that one little thing we need, that tiny little grain of sand up our ass, almost literally, is money." He shifted and drew one leg under her knees. "They'll take pity on us and give us student loans."

"You have to apply, dummy. You have to fill out forms. Your social security number has been in the dead files for twenty years."

"Fuck, baby, this is California! Everybody can get a new social security number. Just ask at the border."

"You're awful," she complained, leaning against him.

"_You fucking love it."_

"Blah blah blah."

How strange it was, after all these years, to fall so comfortably into patterns of speech and feelings!

"We don't even have transcripts. What are we going to do, march up there to the high school and say "Hey, we need to get our transcripts, and by the way, he shot the school up back in the nineties and I killed myself a few years back so neither of us graduated but can you help a sister out?"

"You're so damn negative to be alive again. Honestly."

"Shut up. Look who's talking about negative."

"Yeah, well. I'm different now," he sniffed.

"Not too different," she replied. "I couldn't take it if you were all "tra la la" and happy-go-lucky and listening to top 40."

"Fuck a bunch of that." He rested his chin on her shoulder. "I forget what it's like to be hungry. I wonder if I'll recognize it when it starts again."

"No doubt."

Silence for a while. The rush of water. Silence was still comfortable. No need to fill every second with words. Just…be.

"Speaking of school… I shouldn't have." She offered, feeling a little guilty.

"No, don't. I had to own that. Now it's gone. They're gone."

"That's kind of glib, isn't it?"

"No. I realized something before we left. I realized that it was me that kept them here…all of the people I…" he left that to hang in the air. "Something in me held onto it. And now…remember how quiet it got tonight?"

"Yes."

"It left. Whatever it was, it just…left. I don't know. I can't explain it."

Oh, she didn't care. They were new and whole again and so what. But it was nice to know that they all had escaped as well.

"My mom…" she trailed off.

"Oh, God," he sighed. Like his heart suddenly weighed ten pounds.

"I'm sorry I have to be Debbie Downer."

"All I can say is I thought I did the right thing. I didn't think about implications or wonder if people would be hurt or anything like that then. I was a stupid seventeen year old boy. How many teenage boys did you ever see that had a wide-range scope on their actions back when you knew _other_ teenage boys?"

"True."

"There's only so many ways you can say sorry. I've tried them all, trust me."

"I just took it really personally."

"Duh."

She elbowed him.

"Hey! You break a rib now; we have to go to the ER!"

"What I'm trying to say is, even though I did take it to heart so then, I get what you're saying. And what I'm saying is…I've worked through it. I dealt with it. I let it go."

He pulled her head back on his shoulder so he could see her face. "Tonight? You let it go tonight?"

"Yeah. Actually, I did."

He let her go again, her head returning upright. "That's so cool. I wonder what it was."

"I don't care what it was. I'm just glad it happened."

The wind blew and he gathered her closer to shield her from the chill. "I missed you more than I missed being alive."

"I know. Me too."

"Damn. We can have ice cream again, and hot dogs, and go to movies, and sit around and make fun of people. This is awesome."

"We can sit on the beach and wonder what we're gonna do…"

"You know what? My mom owes me more than she can ever repay. I'll blackmail her ass. I can trot right into a police station now and say, "Tear up that monstrosity of a gazebo! There's bones in them there hills." I might just tell her that."

"You'd have to see her to tell her..." she reminded him.

"Nuh uh. I still remember our telephone number. She hasn't changed it. She's scared some agent might try and call her someday."

She laughed. It was the most wonderful sound in the world to him.

"I'll just call her up and say "Hey, remember me? Yeah, well, I got a new skin suit and I think I have some tales to tell to certain members of public service, mainly those two detectives that scare the living shit out of you."

"That's a nasty plan," she surmised. "I'm loving it."

"Oh, yes!" he said, rocking her side to side in his embrace. "A comrade in arms! You know she tried to make you sick with a cupcake that time…'

"Did she? That old bitch. What did I ever do to her? Fall for her dead son? Fuck her; I've got shit on her, too. Let's light this candle."

He waved a hand at the sea. "Onward and upward."

She sighed, rubbing his hands where they were clasped around her knees. "This is the best day of my life, I swear."

"This is the first day of your life."

"We sound like a cereal commercial."

"Nice." She felt him move behind her, gain his feet. "Come on, come with me." She took his outstretched hand and followed him down the beach, to the water's edge. He stood, the breeze blowing back his perpetually messy hair, curls forming from the humidity. "I've wept this entire ocean through the years."

She shuddered, looping her arm through his and standing just a little behind him. "I have, too."

"Well, then it's ours. All come together and mixed and made into one." He bent down, putting his fingers into the surf and skipping away from the flow of the water before it got to him. Holding up his wet hand in the moonlight, he watched the rivulets of water run down to his wrist, across the scars that had stayed with him. He put one finger in his mouth and tasted the salt.

"Yeah. It's us," he said, offering her another finger. Gingerly, she took it in her mouth for a second.

"Sure is." She cuddled closer, cold.

"You should have grabbed yourself another sweater," he said, forlorn and pulling her under his arm.

"Don't need one." She smiled up at him, eyes shining in the moonlight. "I have you."


End file.
